


Icebound

by unorigelnal (jayburding)



Series: The MCU Dæmon AU [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 01:54:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1208455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayburding/pseuds/unorigelnal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki's world is falling apart, and there is nothing Eisa can do to stop it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Icebound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thejerseydevile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thejerseydevile/gifts).



Loki rushes down the palace corridors, Eisa scrambling to keep up. She knows where he’s going, feels the hysterical clarity of his mind rushing faster than the Bifrost towards a conclusion neither of them wants to face. She’s afraid, wants to hide, but Loki is beyond that now. He’s falling apart, and wants to face their ruin head on, speed it to its conclusion so it can seem like they have some semblance of control over their new reality.

Thor and Tanngrisnir are gone, exiled by the suddenly inscrutable figure of Odin. They fled without facing him while Thor’s disbelieving cry still hung in the air, fearful in a way they’ve never been before. Loki had not shared Eisa’s brief relief when he came for them on Jötunheim, and with Gangleri’s dark eyes burning into her back as they retreated, she had understood why. Odin wasn’t safe anymore. The secrets that lay between them were too many, and the web was swiftly unravelling in the same moment that its true extent was becoming apparent.

Loki’s feet lead them to the Weapons Vault. Eisa huddles against Loki’s legs, afraid of what awaits them beyond the golden doors. Whatever happens, they will not leave the same as they entered.

“What if we went back?” Eisa says, looking up at Loki whose eyes are still fixed on the vault doors. “We could go back to our rooms and scream and cry and break things until the world makes a little more sense.” Loki doesn’t move. “We could run to mother and Hlín,” she tries again, desperate to find something that will turn him back from this inexorable, catastrophic path. “They’ll know what to do. They always do.”

“They lied,” Loki says, quiet and so far away from her. “Just like Odin.”

He opens the doors and strides through. Eisa has a split second to decide if she will follow him or try to dig her claws in and bite through the pain as he walks away from her, to hold him back from this for a few seconds longer-

She can’t do it, can’t bring herself to hurt him when he’s already so fractured, so close to breaking. Eisa chases him down the path to the Casket, walks at his side as it looms in front of them, until the blue glow is all that she can see.

Distantly she remembers a similar light when they were ill, hard blue light and the harsh sounds of Hlín and Gangleri fighting, and it comes crashing down to her that Loki is right. They were all lying. They call Loki the Liesmith, but it seems he learned from the best.

Loki is transfixed by the Casket on its pedestal, holding himself so tight that his outstretched hands tremble. Eisa wants to catch him by the hem of his coat and drag him back, as if safety was something she could recapture if she just got him away from the Casket. They should have stayed away; she should have made him stay away.

The tension breaks before she can move. Loki grips the Casket and raises it from its pedestal, and the creeping spread of cold is impossible to deny. Eisa feels the sudden rush like a breath of frigid air, and like before her shape fixes in place, not suffocating but solid and final and entirely her. She’s black ice, lethally cold, and a perfect fit in her own skin. For a second she feels beautiful, but Loki’s horror is infectious, and the pretty veneer slips away like sheet ice until all they have left is the reality of what they are.

Monster.

“Stop!” Odin’s voice rings out over Gangleri’s harsh croak.

Eisa turns on them with a snarl, hard edged and glacial. She’s frightened, but she wants to be angry, and anger’s easy enough to fake. Odin wields his voice like a hammer, and she can feel Loki cracking under the weight of that one word so vividly that she looks for the cracks in her own faceted form.

Loki does not even look at Odin. He only has eyes for the inescapable truth writ blue across his skin.

“Am I cursed?” he asks.

Eisa turns back to look at him, infected with his anxiety as he clutches for any other answer but the one he already knows and cannot face. She leans against his leg, a familiar comfort gesture, but she is no soft coated dog anymore. Her lines are drawn as sharp as a winter carved wolf now, no comfort at all, and it’s no surprise that Loki pulls away, though her heart breaks just a little when he does.

“What am I?”

“You are my son,” Odin says, and seems sincere, but Eisa watches Gangleri, who measures the both of them with a look normally reserved for carrion. She growls, thinking of the ravens that would follow a wolf in winter, scavenging for whatever they could take.

_What have you done?_

Loki releases the Casket slowly, horrified and yet reluctant- was this what it was to feel well? To be whole?- and the ice in his skin melts away. The heat of the room immediately encroaches on Eisa, a physical weight upon her as she looks at her paws and sees the sharp lines blur as she begins to melt. She whimpers and hides herself behind Loki’s legs as he turns, seeping down to a cat shape because the weight of the wolf is choking her.

“What more than that?” Loki asks, brittle like the quick temperature change has damaged him. It has, she can feel it. He is fracturing with the weight of it, and there is nothing she can do but stay closer than his shadow and hope to hold what he can’t. If only she could breathe-

“The Casket wasn’t the only thing you took from Jötunheim that day was it,” Loki says as he approaches Odin who has paused on the steps and will not move closer. If Eisa hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he was afraid, but Gangleri’s calculating look speaks the truth of it.

“No,” Odin finally replies as they pause at the base of the stairs, Eisa pressed tight against Loki’s leg and this time he does not refuse her. She’s trembling and so is he, but they are together, and they will weather this. They can fix the fractures if they just make it through. They leave the silence open for Odin to fill, offering him nothing.

“In the aftermath of the battle, I went into the temple, and I found a baby. Small for a giant’s offspring. Abandoned, suffering, left to die.”

He pauses then, almost seems unsure. Gangleri fills the gap without missing a beat.

“Laufey’s son.”

Later, Eisa will realise she felt the exact moment Loki shattered like so much ice.


End file.
